Health Care
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Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s health care legacy
Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s retirement will end the career of a senator who’s known for taking up unflashy but critical health care issues like mental health policy and funding reauthorizations. Why it matters: Her departure means the Senate will lose one of its most effective mental health champions. The big picture: Stabenow, who chairs the Senate Finance health subcommittee, is an ardent mental health advocate and led many of the mental health provisions passed last month in the omnibus package. They included legislation to increase the mental health care workforce and to get Medicare coverage for mental health counselors and therapists. She also spearheaded the 2014 Excellence in Mental Health and…
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Mississippi Health Care Faces ‘Looming Disaster,’ MSMA Tells Lawmakers
Mississippi’s health-care crisis is worsening, and an overhaul of the state’s “current system of care is unmistakably essential,” a leading medical group warned hours before the State Legislature was set to begin its 2023 session at noon Monday. “The lack of access to healthcare for many Mississippians is currently a crisis, not a new crisis, but one that has been fermenting—and is getting worse,” the Mississippi State Medical Association said in a press release this morning. “As hospitals close across Mississippi, access to life-saving medical care becomes a real threat to all Mississippi. While the debate rages on as to why our hospitals are closing, the immediate crisis progressively engulfs…
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‘Not business as usual’: Health lobbyists brace for Bernie Sanders
Lobbyists also worry they’ll struggle to get traction on any push to make changes to a drug discount program involving pharmaceutical companies and hospitals or revisit association health plans after a Trump-era rule around them was voided. “This will not be business as usual for K Street. It will be harder for companies to get in and make a case,” said Michaeleen Crowell, a lobbyist at lobbying and public affairs firm S-3 Group who served as Sanders’ chief of staff for more than five years. “The culture in the office is one where lobbyists are mistrusted, and they’re more likely to discount what they hear directly from companies.” POLITICO spoke…
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Four paradoxes of health care reform: Conservatives can take moral and political high ground
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Polls show that Americans trust Democrats over Republicans on health care more than any other issue. However, they also show that conservative health care solutions, such as price transparency and increasing choice and competition to lower prices, are popular. This dynamic has led to a conventional wisdom among the center-right health care reform community – that Americans will come around to trusting conservatives if we talk more about our market and state and local-based policies to make care and coverage more affordable. We agree that conservatives should not shy away from discussing health care, but opinion research our two organizations conducted this…
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4,300 health care positions open across North Dakota – InForum
GRAND FORKS — North Dakota has 4,300 job openings in the field of health care, according to the director of Grand Forks’ workforce center. Dustin Hillebrand, manager of the Grand Forks workforce center, said there are 932 health care-related job openings in the region. He said the number of job openings has been high for several years, but the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated shortages. “Having a lot of health care openings isn’t new to the post-pandemic workforce,” Hillebrand said. “We had a strong demand for health care professionals before COVID, and the pandemic only increased the need.” Hillebrand attributes the growing number of job openings to a combination…
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Systems Within a System | City Journal
The debate over American health care has a familiar structure: Sally Pipes at National Review argues that “the American health-care system is world-beating.” Sarah Kliff at Vox, by contrast, declares that “the American health care system is literally the worst.” Pipes cites access to quality medical services; Kliff points to high costs. A clear relationship holds between the availability and affordability of health care in the United States, as it does everywhere else—when you spend less, you get less. But both sides in this debate also find it easy to make their respective cases, because the “American health care system” is not one thing. Rather, it is five very different…
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Medical bills heading to dispute resolution far more often than anticipated
Data: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; Note: Includes initiating parties or their representatives. For emergency and non-emergency services; Chart: Madison Dong/Axios Visuals Insurers and providers are overwhelming an arbitration system Congress set up to resolve billing disputes as part of the law to prevent surprise medical bills, according to CMS data. Why it matters: The No Surprises Act, which went into effect earlier this year, protected privately insured patients from getting stuck holding the bag when there’s a disagreement over the cost of out-of-network care. But the mechanism for deciding who ultimately pays — which allows providers to appeal out-of-network payments they find unreasonable with a third-party arbitrator —…
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Health care leader Andrew Dreyfus is charting his next chapter
He goes on to explain he doesn’t have any hobbies, not even gardening or playing a musical instrument. He owns neither a second home nor a boat. But there is one thing he remains passionate about: Changing health care. He will, for example, be teaching this spring at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He’s already come up with the course’s working title: “Can Health Plans Be Good? The potential and limits of health plans as agents of health system change.” He will join the board of the Joint Commission, an influential national health care accreditation organization, and continue to chair the board of the Blue Cross foundation. He…
